It has long been the practice in providing highway dividers and protective screenings along construction sites to employ elongated concrete members having relatively upstanding portions and flared supporting base aligned in end-to-end relation to form an essentially continuous barrier in the area needed. The preformed sections, generally fabricated from concrete and about sixteen feet in length, are extremely heavy, requiring special equipment for transport to location and relocation. While quite durable as both highway dividers and screens for construction sites, these sectional highway barriers leave much to be desired in many respects. While relatively indestructible when installed as highway divider, such barriers, when used as protective screening along construction sites, are easily damaged when being moved from place to place, and frequently must be discarded and replaced after five or six moves to different construction locations.
Highway barriers of the type described, while effectively guiding motorists in high speed travel along busy highways can cause serious damage to vehicles coming in contact with them, and they have been the cause of many serious and sometimes fatal accidents due to loss of control of moving vehicles when contacting the barriers. Furthermore, the relatively narrow profile of the barrier ends makes them difficult to see in various weather conditions, and many accidents have been experienced involving head-on impact with the barrier ends.
It follows from the foregoing that both from the standpoint of installation and maintenance, and the standpoint of motorist safety, there is need for improvement in ways of providing highway barriers and protective screens for highway construction sites.